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The End of a Motherfucking Era

№183

11 Mar. 2014, ~4 minutes

InTechnology

In which I finally move my blog from the Blogger+Blogspot combo to Github+Jekyll.

The time has finally come to say goodbye to Blogger and Blogspot. We’ve had some good times in these past—coming on—seven years but there comes a time in everyone’s life when one simply must move on, which is exactly what I’m doing. Or, have already done, as a matter of fact.

You see, I’m obviously not done rambling and ranting on about the various mundane things I do, but rather I’ve come to a new exciting chapter in the saga that is Carlos Eriksson.

Yeah, I’m calling it a “saga”.

For quite some time now I’ve mentioned how this blog is moving to my own domain and whilst I’ve been procrastinating it for as long as I’ve been talking about it, I’ve also been looking at different Content Management Systems (CMS) trying to figure out which way would be the best way to go. I knew I wanted something light and minimal, in both the markup and the backend. I wanted something that didn’t get in my way of writing, which Blogger unfortunately has a habit of doing.

I also wanted to make the transition to owning my own data, because as we become more and more of a commodity in the eyes of e.g. Google and Facebook I think it’s vital to recognise the importance of our data and protect said data from the companies who seek to monetize us.

Despite considering creating my own small CMS for all of this, I decided against it in the end, because it would get in the way of my writing and whenever I would have any kind of problem, I could only turn to myself for the answers instead of Stack Overflow. And to be honest, I’d rather turn to Stack Overflow. There’s thousands of people out there, smarter than me, who deal with this shit every day and have probably already figured out the solution. Let’s rely on those people instead.

So, with these “features” on my wish-list I found Jekyll.

Ironically, Jekyll isn’t a Blogging Software at all but a parsing engine.

I had looked at it before but passed on it because it seemed cumbersome to install on Windows, to the point of almost not working at all. But then last weekend, I made the effort to actually look into it further, thinking I would give it a decent shot and if I couldn’t get it to work in two days I would just give up and look for something else.

But I didn’t have to because now I have a switched over hosting to Github+Jekyll and now have a super-ugly bootstrap website with barely any content at all.

And it’s perfect.

You see, another “problem” I tried to deal with—having looked into using Wordpress—was that every CMS out there came with so much markup. Even the most minimal Wordpress theme is still quite the beast with its PHP files everywhere and plugins you can install. Jekyll on the other hand, especially because I decided to host it on Github, doesn’t come with any plugins. And I can’t add any either because the second I push it to Github it will stop working because Github doesn’t use this or that plugin.

But rather than being annoying, it’s liberating. Jekyll, is the empty—more or less—canvas I’ve been longing for.

Jekyll does not come with any content nor does it have any templates or design elements. This is a common source of confusion when getting started. Jekyll does not come with anything you actually use or see on your website—you have to make it.

Perfect.

Instead of dealing with a bloated Wordpress or an aging Blogger I get nothing. And it’s the best kind of nothing.

Granted, I’m sure Jekyll isn’t for everyone and that’s fine by me. In no way do I mean to suggest that this is the best thing since sliced bread. It just fits me perfectly right now and that’s awesome.

So, whilst a part of me is panicking, thinking “How will I ever survive without—“

Nah. I’m joking.

I’m actually really excited about this. And with that, this is it. The last post on Blogger. I still have a lot to do. Migrating all the posts from here is going to take a while—because I want to get it right—but that’s fine, I’ve got the time.

In the meantime. Head on over to—the extremly ugly, work in progress—carloseriksson.com, where you can continue to read about the various mundane endeavours I pursue.